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Cassin auklets found washed up near Tofino

More than 100,000 of the small seabirds have been found dead along Pacific coast since October

Scientists are trying to determine why thousands of tiny seabirds called Cassin’s auklets have washed up on the West Coast, all the way from B.C. to California.

More than 100,000 carcasses of the small, white-bellied birds have been found dead since October, including hundreds found along Long Beach in Pacific Rim National Park near Tofino, B.C.

Experts say young auklets often die during winter storms, but this year up to 100 times the normal number are washing ashore in some places along the coast.

About 80 per cent of the species’ breeding population of 3.5 million birds is estimated to live around the Scott Islands, located off the northern tip of Vancouver Island.

Ucluelet resident Mary Christmas said that in her decades walking the beaches near her home on the west coast of Vancouver Island she had never seen anything like what she found Dec. 22.

“There were about 100 dead birds. It was quite disturbing,” said Christmas.

Parks Canada staff collected 157 dead Cassin’s auklets from a small section of Long Beach nearby. Some were frozen and sent for necropsies to try to understand what is causing the mass die-off.

Others have reported finding hundreds of the birds on beaches in Haida Gwaii, located to the north of Vancouver Island.

U.S. testing points to starvation

While Parks Canada staff await results, University of Washington biologist Julia Parrish said some evidence suggests the birds are not being affected by any sort of toxin, but are starving to death.

Parrish said it is unclear why, because other birds that feed on the same types of shrimp and plankton aren’t affected.

Cassin’s auklets are small seabirds that spend much of their life in the open water of the north Pacific Ocean.

We have never seen a die-off of Cassin’s like this,” said Parrish.

Her best guess is several factors are at play, including too many young birds born this year, conditions at sea pushing them closer to shore than normal and perhaps something involving their prey.

“We are also hypothesizing — this is not proven, so our best guess — that these birds, which normally can go quite far out to sea — they’re small birds but they’re tough little things, and they’ll spend the winter far out over the North Pacific — we think for some reason the whole population is much closer to the shore,” said Parrish.

“So when a Cassin’s is dying, it has a much greater chance of reaching the shore … than normal,” she speculated.

Whether the die-off is being triggered by natural forces or if something else is at play, Parrish said, the result is still unfortunate.

“It’s a tragic event. It’s an untoward event.… We have never seen a die-off of Cassin’s like this, so that in and of itself says something.”

“I don’t think it’s going to cause the population to wink out, but it’s enough to make me sit up and pay attention.”

Cacilia Honisch, a resident of Tlell on Haida Gwaii, took this picture of some of the hundreds of Cassin’s auklets she spotted on a two-kilometre stretch of East Beach. (Cacilia Honisch)

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Cassin’s auklets seem to be starving to death on Pacific Coast

Scientists are trying to figure out what’s behind the deaths of seabirds that have been found by the hundreds along the Pacific Coast since October.

Mass die-offs of the small, white-bellied grey birds known as Cassin’s aucklets have been reported from British Columbia to San Luis Obispo, Calif.

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It’s normal for some seabirds to die during harsh winter conditions, especially during big storms, but the scale of the current die-off is unusual.

“To be this lengthy and geographically widespread, I think is kind of unprecedented,” Phillip Johnson, executive director of the Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition, told the Salem Statesman Journal. “It’s an interesting and somewhat mysterious event.”

Unclear why birds are starving to death

The birds appear to be starving to death, so experts don’t believe a toxin is the culprit, said Julia Burco, a wildlife veterinarian for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

But why the birds can’t find food is a mystery.

Researchers say it could be the result of a successful breeding season, leading to too many young birds competing for food. Unusually violent storms might be pushing the birds into areas they’re not used to or preventing them from foraging. Or a warmer, more acidic ocean could be affecting the supply of tiny zooplankton, such as krill, that the birds eat.

The U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin is conducting additional necropsies on dead birds, researchers said.

Robert Ollikainen of Tillamook, Oregon, found 132 dead birds on the beach there, including 126 Cassin’s auklets on Dec. 26.

“It was pretty dramatic,” Ollikainen said.

2 thoughts on “Cassin auklets found washed up near Tofino”

That and also the problem with getting protein. As the oceans change due to warming and also more importantly as they increase in acidity the source of protein changes, causing animals to migrate outside their old habitat to find food. Sometimes you get blooms and sometimes you get busts, but overall the trend is for less and less protein and destabilization of the food web as we know it.